WIREDGOV

Blog posted by: Stephen Mann, 13 April 2016.

This blog (abridged from my original 3000-word version) isn’t meant to be a review of the new ITIL Practitioner Guidance publication, although you might feel it sails close, and instead talks to the content that stands out for me, i.e. the stuff that will really help the reader.

The new book is probably not what you might have expected, i.e. ITIL process help. Instead it covers much of the operational, management, and organizational “glue” required not only to adopt ITIL, and/or to improve ITSM maturity, but also to be a well-functioning IT service provider.

Standout #1: Let’s Start with the ITIL Practitioner Authors

Straight off the bat, the authors instilled me with a certain level of confidence. I can’t speak for Kevin Behr and Lou Hunnebeck, who I don’t know personally, but the quartet of Karen Ferris, Barclay Rae, Stuart Rance, and Paul Wilkinson would not get involved with (nor attach their names to) any publication, ITIL or otherwise, that doesn’t take the ITSM industry forward.

Standout #2: The Acknowledgement of Enterprise Service Management

Well sort of. There’s a very small section, okay a paragraph, called “Service Management Versus IT Service Management.” It doesn’t actually mention enterprise service management explicitly, nor does the book’s index, but rather that “The core principles of service and services, value, outcomes, costs and risks are relevant to all kinds of service providers, not just those delivering IT services.”

Standout #3: ITIL Practitioner’s Nine “Guiding Principles”

It’s definitely a new concept for an ITIL publication and I’d bet it’s down to the book’s authors not wanting to just write “another 200 pages of consultant-waffle” (where more words are somehow seen as better, well at least for the author’s wallet). Without even thinking about it, or maybe even realizing it, the principles elevate the reader from a focus on ITSM processes to a focus on better outcomes – whether they be for the business, customer, end user, or the IT organization itself – hopefully moving ITSM forward from “the things you should do,” such as incident management, to “the things you should achieve.” And the guiding principles show their intentions very quickly, with the first being “focus on value.”

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